It was not the 4:3 but it was the decision. Without bot or without the crappy bot ticket draw Anu had good chances to win this game -> 2:0 and in the end a 4:2.

But this is a "IF-THEN" case, nobody knows what happens then...

There was some irregularity to this game because Anu even didn't left the game! But both players agreed to continue and she was replaced after 2 minutes of inactivity (even if SHE was not seeing it, we others saw it!).

I agree with erps too. it's right that we may have won this round if bot didn't choose this tix. At the moment I feel really sad, that we lost this round because of bot, but OLE's are great and nice players and they deserve to win. Personally for me, it is ok that they won. Tomorrow I will remember all the nice and good things in nc and there is a lot of it !!

I just hope that this won't happen in other games again, so I would say too that it is necessary that something will change... I don't know what, I don't know anything about computers, but something should change

Well, I am sorry Lele, but it's not about being nice, it's about fairness. This game was highly unfair and I am absolutly not happy to let it go through. There is something I can't stand, which would be unfairness (not that I blame you OLE, but put yourself into Anu's position).

I can't push you to anything and I won't, but I give you the option to reconsider.

Hey there was no outcry in any of the 3 games where I got botted over the course of this NC. None of them was for taking too long and 1 was in the QF. Luckily I came back and won 2 even though the bot did stupid things. Anu takes FOREVER to play. It is her own fault. She needs to learn to play quicker.

I am all for no bots, but then something needs to be done about these people who can hijack others lives by making 1 game last about an hour.

I totally agree with erps, that something has to be done with the bot coming into tournament games. And i agree, that it is terrible to end a tournament like that.

To Thadd: i find it difficult to talk about fairness here. If i am not mistaken it was a time fault??? The two minutes were over ??? Please correct me here if i am wrong. In that case every player knows we have a bot coming in even if that is not good. And everybody knows, that the bot is unpredictable. I guess Anu started her move with the black just a few tenth of a second too late? And the bot-move was to pick and select tx - i guess you cannot get INTO the bot move once it has started and select tx yourself? Of course the question is, why does the bot play so poorly? But then again it is common knowledge that the bot move is most likely to your disadvantage. This is very sad indeed. But not deep_blues fault.
The bot came into other games - like kid said - and it also happened to players of my team before. It was well known. It is difficult for me to see, how you want to read the rules differently than it has been done or what you believe was unfair? And i do not say this because we benefit from it.

But we have to find solutions to prevent incidents like that in the future. Maybee we really need some programming changes?

Considering a bot change for tournaments i think we should also discuss how much time we want to allow the players for their moves? I personally am no friend of these endless games. I find them difficult to watch and my family is usually getting angry, when i watch games for 4 ! hours ........ i may be the only one but i believe it is time to talk about that point.

speaking for the OLE-Team we are hoping that we all can get over this real quick and keep playing a great tournament. I believe, that the only involved players have accepted the status anyway.

First of all, this took long from me to decide even I should write at all - but when reading all this, I think it is time to explain what I saw and what happened on my side.

I was not disconnected, and I do not know how long it took when bot came, if it was that 2 min, ok. But when I rejoined the game, nothing had happened. Was still my turn and everthing was just like when Pete last time played. So I thought that I was quick enough and bot had not played. I played my 6 blacks and after that it was no ones turn. Then I was told that bot took more tickets, I did not see those...... any explanations why???

Then because nothing to do, I had to go out again and when I came back, I saw the other bot had taken one ticket and those 6 blacks I played, were never played. Very strange I would say.

Later on, I was told that bot got Helena-LA, Calgary-Phoenix and Montreal-Atlanta and very smart bot took Montreal-Atlanta, perfect for my route......

That is all I am gonna say about this. Strange things happen and this is not the end of the world. Just a pity that whole match was lost because of this. Never happened to me before and I certanly hope it will never happen to anyone else. And if someone wants to decide what should be done, it really is not my job to do. I will accept all decisions.

And btw kid.....if you check these games, are you sure it was me who was slow?

I can't push you to anything and I won't, but I give you the option to reconsider.

hi all

I am really sorry, but I can't decide that. This is too much asked of me. I'm sorry, but I am 15 years old, I have never done a job like this captain job now, I am absolutely tired and I have no idea what to do now !! Of course we would like to win, but winning THIS way won't be better than lose. Thadd, you give us the option to reconsider, but I won't. It is your decicion what will happen because of that, I can't decide that, I am not neutrally. I will accept every decicion you will take, I think I wrote often enough that OLE deserve to win, and ich gönne es ihnen auch !! (don't know that in english).

In my opinion the game is played correctly and we should not overrule this (maybe directly after the game but not now). Still there was some irregularity in the game as Anu didn't see the same as the visitors, but there is no proof for this (personally i believe her, but we will open pandoras box if we claim a decision on the words of players!).

My point is that there are some major technical problems included AND a crap bot programming. So it is necessary to implement some tournament game options as i wrote before in another thread and the most important point is the "no bot" rule.

The technical things:

1. It is not really good that the botted player didn't see this event. Why? What happened?

2. A quick rejoin confuses the program (like last year, we had a similar case there). Why is it possible to stall the program. Two possibilities: Give the player time to rejoin (30 seconds) or let the player not rejoin during the bot move. Both should be possible.

3. Not the only bad moves the bot takes. I saw thekid's game and the bot was awful too (but the match was not as important as this match) and it was not combined with the technical problems i described above. I saw the second time that the bot took color cards in the last move with tickets unfulfilled or a 6 track on hand. Hey, in this case, let's say, if someones drop out of a game, he lose automaticly

This thread was not meant to discuss if the game should be annuled or something like that. It was meant to avoid this for the future.

Make a new Tab for tournament games with no bots. Why a new Tab? Because opening such games in the normal lobby Tab will decline the new 5 minutes replacement feature. Players who wish to do such things will open these games with this option and it is not really possible to quickly see another option on the games rooster.

Sorry ANU this is not the first time strange things happen
I have already seen a bot play for a player during 4 games in a row.
No one has seen him but i swear it happened
DOW please check is was on thursday 9 at 21h15
Thks

I do not want to get into the discussion of this particular game but the general bot issue.

Sometimes I get a socket error and lose the game connection from my end. I restart the game, wait in the lobby, and rejoin the game at the first opportunity. The bot timeout is still needed for the server to recongnize the disconnect. Since the game list is updated every 5 sec or so, the other user may have already taken a couple of turns if I am not quick enough. However, an additional 15-30 second timeout before the bot starts playing would prevent losing a turn. This might be the best alternative.

My personal worst experiences - if connection is lost at the time when it is not my move. Then I'm waiting for the opponent's move, and little do I know that the move is done, my time is ticking off, and that maybe I'm already replaced by the bot.

It would be very nice to have immediate indication that connection is lost - regardless who's move it is. Say, all clients are checking connection every 5 seconds in the background, automatically, and some big red light flashing if connection is lost.

My personal worst experiences - if connection is lost at the time when it is not my move. Then I'm waiting for the opponent's move, and little do I know that the move is done, my time is ticking off, and that maybe I'm already replaced by the bot.

It would be very nice to have immediate indication that connection is lost - regardless who's move it is. Say, all clients are checking connection every 5 seconds in the background, automatically, and some big red light flashing if connection is lost.

Dandy

Yes I have work in progress about:

proper detection of TCP disconnection, and client alert

defer first bot move for 30s

The problem is that it is kind of a drastic change, so it has to be well tested.
Right now it is impossible to test such things on a real scale (ie real traffic and game habits), so I'm still thinking of a solution to offer a kind of "beta server" connected to the real server. People willing to test it could play through this version and report me bugs and other things.
Any idea about testing is welcome.

What about something like a "tournament bot"? You can choose tournament mode at the beginning, and if a player lost connection, or leaves the game for any other reason, the tournament bot appears. But only as a placeholder, he simply does nothing but waiting.

BTW - I have the feeling that the following happens frequently:
Opponent takes a long time to think with many dots.
Now the other player get's kicked out but doesn't even see it (screen still shows it's the opp's turn, you can type in the chat window).
Is it possible that the 5-min-bot kicks out the wrong player?

Please check that - it just happened to me and I hadn't lost connection for months.

And yes, I'm angry Just lost a game in QT4 that any 1200 player would have won at the point where the bot drew ticks.
Nobody but the idiotic bot would draw tickets when he already completed LA-MIA and LA-NY and can end the game in 3 more turns having longest!!!

I think that players should be aware of some of the new bots that have been enabled with the new rankings:

PsychicBot - knows your next four moves in advance
JediBot - bot:"bleh, you dont want to take Calgary to Winnipeg this turn." me:"i dont think i will take CGY to WPG this turn" next turn, bot plays the 6 white
1600Bot - programmed by drakestorm and Kotay to count cards, run stats analysis on opponent route probability, and play at 1600+ strategy level.
GuestBot - plays worse that DumbBot, except chats more and says randomly rude comments when losing the game.

It's only an idea for tournaments. In a BEST OF X series both players are able to cancel ONE game either after ticket drawing or after a bot move. Not for the upcoming tournament, but what do you think?

It seems that in 2 player USA, with good players of roughly equal skill, the player who goes first wins has about a 30% advantage (i.e, with equal skills, the player going first should win about 65% of the time).

In tournaments, we could control for this by making a restart automatic if one player gets too far ahead in going first. i.e. In a best of 5, if you have already gone first 3 times, you MUST restart if you go first again.